Sales Force Automation (SFA) Software

There are over 100 sales force automation (SFA) software systems on the market. And these systems come in all flavors: solutions for small businesses, solutions for large enterprises, solutions for companies that sell through channel partners, and solutions for specific industries, to name a few. We’ve written this buyer’s guide to provide a lay of the land for software buyers who are looking to do a sales force automation review and trying to make sense of this complex market. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What is SFA Software?
What Type of Buyer Are You?
The SFA Vendor Landscape

Market Trends You Should Understand
Benefits & Potential Issues

What is SFA Software?

“Coffee is for closers,” but sales force automation (SFA) promises to help the entire sales force close more deals. This category of software helps companies manage their sales team and its activities. At the individual level, SFA helps reps manage accounts, leads, opportunities, and customer interactions. Meanwhile, it helps management generate more accurate forecasts and gain better insight into opportunities. 

Core sales automation software functionality includes contact management, lead management, opportunity management, pipeline management, forecasting, and territory management. More advanced systems will include modules for proposal and quote generation, order management, marketing automation, collateral management, scripting, computer telephony integration and social media integration.

Best-of-breed sales force automation products such as Sage ACT or Salesforce.com are often implemented as a completely stand alone system. Other buyers choose to implement SFA software as part of a complete customer relationship management (CRM) suite, such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Finally, SFA can also be implemented as part of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite like Oracle or SAP. Which strategy you pursue will largely depend on your need for the SFA system to share data with other customer management or ERP systems, as well as whether the SFA from your existing vendors addresses your current company needs.

What Type of SFA Buyer Are You?

Before evaluating sales force automation systems, you’ll need to assess what kind of SFA buyer you are. We believe 90%+ of buyers fall into one of the following categories:

  • Direct sales buyer. These buyers work for organizations that sell through direct field sales teams, telesales teams, or both. These buyers have the most straightforward SFA requirements and a wide range of providers meet their needs. 
  • Channel sales buyer. These buyers work for organizations that sell through a network of channel partners. These buyers need specialized functionality for passing leads, registering deals, and tracking partner sales performance.
  • Enterprise buyer. These buyers work for very large organizations, which often have a wide range of sales models. Their goals including unifying activity across channels and integrating their SFA with other enterprise systems - a complex undertaking. 
  • Small business CRM buyer. These buyers work for small businesses moving beyond contact tracking capabilities of products like Microsoft Outlook, and want to add SFA capabilities for lead, opportunity, deal tracking and reporting.  

The SFA Vendor Landscape

While the SFA landscape is highly fragmented and may at first appear confusing, the available programs are differentiated by their appeal to the different buyer types.

This type of buyer... Should evaluate these systems
Direct sales buyer Salesforce.com, Sage Act, Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Indirect sales buyer Oracle CRM OnDemand, SAP
Enterprise buyer Oracle CRM, SAP, Salesforce.com
Small business CRM buyer Sage Act, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Highrise

Market Trends You Should Understand

These market trends should be considered as you do a sales force automation software comparison and select a product and vendor.

  • Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS solutions have become very popular and comprise greater than 50% of new SFA sales. Low upfront costs and little to no hardware requirements are reasons for the uptake in adoption of SFA software that sits “in the cloud.” Another benefit is increased accessibility, which means that regardless of whether you're a Mac or PC, you can still easily access the software. The dominant leader in this market is Salesforce.com. Buyers should evaluate this new model with an open mind.
  • Mobile applications. Mobile SFA applications are very popular and changing rapidly. The devices your SFA system supports, and the attractiveness of its mobile app will be a huge influence on your sales team’s attitude toward adopting the system. While improving rapidly, small factor devices still present challenges - they don’t always do everything their desktop siblings can. 
  • Social media. Leading SFA vendors are also capitalizing on developments in social media. In fact, this is driving the emergence of a new market, Social CRM. For example, Salesforce has its Chatter application. Oracle OnDemand interfaces with Facebook, allowing a sales rep to see if there is anyone they know in common with a prospect. Buyers should consider their social media strategy as they evaluate SFA solutions.
  • ERP suites offering strong CRM. The customer relationship management and SFA solutions from enterprise-suite vendors like Oracle, SAP, Sage, Epicor and Infor have matured - in some cases through acquisitions. Enterprise suite buyers will naturally look to their ERP vendor for customer management solutions, but direct and indirect sales buyers should also consider solutions from these large players. Oracle and SAP are particularly strong in customer relationship management.

Benefits & Potential Issues

An SFA tool must benefit both managers and the sales force. The following are the minimum benefits that should be realized with a successful implementation:

  • Reduce cost per sale. The critical return for any SFA system is that sales increase and the cost per sale goes down. The traditional measures are a reduction in the time from contact to sale, and increase in the ratio of closures to contacts, or an increase in the number of contacts with the same ratio of closures to contacts. 
  • Increase sales rep accountability. With formal SFA tools and procedures, sales representatives can see exactly what they are reporting to management. Sales reps can also document lead generation and productivity.
  • Forecast sales more accurately. SFA software can track such metrics as conversion rates from leads to opportunities to closed deals, allowing an organization to more accurately forecast sales. This is particularly beneficial when combined with historical seasonality information. 
  • Improve client retention rates. Coupled with other information from a customer management system, an SFA system can ensure that clients are contacted in advance of contract expiration dates and alert the customer rep to any issues with their client accounts.
  • Gain analytical insight. SFA software consolidates and reports on each representative’s activities, freeing the representatives from mundane periodic reporting and allowing them to focus on sales and customer relations.

As with all technology, there are potential issues as well. First and foremost is the risk of compromising client privacy, particularly if the SFA is implemented on easy-to-lose (or steal) mobile devices. This can be mitigated through the use of proper security procedures and encryption technology. A second issue is sales force resistance to adoption; some sales people find the tools too difficult, too limiting, or too intrusive. This is generally a training issue. The third issue is a management issue; SFA tools drastically increase what can be measured and managed but that does not mean that everything should be measured or managed. The granularity of management required varies from organization to organization and even from manager to manager and representative to representative.

Have an opinion on this guide? Email the authors. We appreciate the feedback.

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Top 10 Most Recommended Systems

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers a complete sales force automation solution that makes it easy to manage leads, opportunities and accounts in one location. Real-time insight and mobile access helps your team optimize their efforts.

Sage ACT!

Sage ACT! is a great software solution for the small business sales team that needs to manage the pipeline and recruit more new business. It also includes some great tools like meeting notes and task reminders.

LeadMaster Lead Management

Designed with the salesperson in mind, LeadMaster offers one of the most intuitive systems on the market. It is a complete SFA solution, with features including lead management, sales forecasting and detailed activity tracking.

Sage SalesLogix

Sage SalesLogix is a midmarket solution with advanced sales force automation features, such as automated workflows and pipeline management. These work together to help sales teams boost their productivity and efficiency.

FieldOne

FieldOne is a web-based service management solution designed to streamline your sales and service cycles. It offers purchase and inventory management, as well as mobile deployment so agents can close deals from anywhere.

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InfusionSoft

Infusionsoft is a great fit for small businesses looking to automate their sales processes. It has advanced features for e-commerce, including an online shopping cart, electronic order forms, and automated sales reports.

AIMcrm

AIMcrm was developed specifically to help automate the tasks of sales managers in small and mid-sized organizations. It is a web-based system with industry-specific solutions to cater to the needs of your business.

PlanPlus Online

PlanPlus Online is FranklinCovey's online CRM and business collaboration solution. It has strong SFA features including a sophisticated dashboard where sales agents can track opportunities and get accurate forecasting.

Salesnet

Salesnet is a midmarket solution with strong sales force automation capabilities. The system is web based, so it can be accessed from anywhere and is easily customizable to reflect your business practices and priorities.

ContactWise CRM

ContactWise CRM by GroupLink is a highly secure on-premise solution with embedded sales force automation features. It also features strong reporting tools, as well as mobile access for the traveling sales professional.

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